Heh, even worse with upgrading to Vista is the fact that you have to jump through hoops to get it to do a fresh install, an option all previous versions had as an option. I had to upgrade because I was stupid and deleted every single file in my drivers folder and some of the 'needed' drivers weren't from the disk.

Now, this last month, I've been upgrading my wife's computer with new parts. For weeks, I couldn't figure out why it wouldn't POST, to the point that I was sending things back to newegg for replacement. After I exhausted all my options, I took it to a local store to be looked at. Well, it turned out that the floppy drive power cable on the ps had a ground (though the main plug was putting out what it was supposed to). The shop found this out when the aforementioned ground happened to touch the chassis and caught the wire on fire. Blew out the floppy drive and PS along with it. But it solved the problem and my wife has a working computer now.

Rainchild: That keyboard shortcut program sounds very useful. I'll definitely look into that. While I also use the mouse, I'm definitely a heavy keyboard user too. The Directory Opus program already allows shortcut keys to be assigned to custom scripts, but I don't know if it can use the windowskey, so I'll look at that too. The windowskey is definitely a great way to assign "system" shortcuts since it really can't be easily used in software (like CMUD) for macros.

I also haven't taken full advantage of this G15 keyboard yet. There are these 18 extra keys on the left side that can be assigned to macros. This could be really useful in Delphi to assign various commands and refactorings to. My only problem right now is with how to remember what is assigned to each key. Since the keys are just numbered (G1..G18), it's not very mnemonic. I need to experiment with various labels on the front sides of the keys and see what I can come up with.

The new computer hardware is scheduled to arrive today. UPS tracking shows it all "out for delivery", so it's just a matter of which truck it is on and when they get here. Maybe I'll get lucky and get it on a morning truck. In the meantime, I'm going to go start reading up on transferring XP and Vista to new hardware and see what I can expect. I'm not sure I can just transfer the disks to the new hardware and expect it to all magically work. I might need to be prepared to do a "repair install" of XP or something like that.

Cross your fingers and wish me luck for today. Hopefully the disks themselves were fine all along and it was other hardware problems causing all of this.

If I remember right, a friend of mine ran into a problem several years ago when transferring a hard disk with an XP install to a completely new system. I believe he was getting blue screens on bootup because he didn't go into Safe mode as the first step and uninstall his old motherboard drivers. I have no idea if this could be a problem with vista, though. (It might even vary between motherboard models).

Hmm, I just did a motherboard changeout and didn't have to do anything to the motherboard drivers before installing the new ones. Though, if you are switching chipsets it might be something to watch for.

Given the extensive hardware changes, I'll probably run Windows XP Repair just to be safe. That seems to be the most reliable way to upgrade motherboards when you have the original XP disk.

I'm a bit more worried about Vista. From what I have been reading, it looks like I'll likely need to call Microsoft to get Vista activated on this new hardware. Fortunately I have a true Vista CD rather than an OEM copy. Looks like people who have an OEM copy of Vista (like Vista preinstalled on a Dell/HP/etc computer) are screwed though because Vista is licensed to the motherboard on those systems.

I just created the floppy disks with the SATA drivers for the new motherboard for both XP and Vista, so now I'm all set and just waiting for the hardware to arrive.

I've upgraded my motherboard, hard disks and graphics card separately on my Vista machine without having to re-authenticate, Zugg, so you should be ok. Microsoft dropped the extensive re-authentication requirements before launch, so I'm not sure why others are reporting having to do as much. Perhaps a case of bad luck? :/

And don't worry about calling them if it turns out you have to, you just run through the usual questions.
No it's not a new machine, it's a new hard disk. It's only installed on this PC. No, it's not installed on any other PCs (sure I just said that).
Job done, 2 minute call.

Well it looks like it was a power supply issue. I had some old parts hanging around, and one was actually a better power supply. (Not sure I wasn't using it instead, but I'm glad I had it) Then I spent another half hour thinking my AGP video card (yes it's old and due for an upgrade) went bad on me. Turned out it was me being greedy for RAM. When I went to the supply trunk I have, I saw I had two more sticks of EDO RAM and thought I use up the last RAM slot on my mobo. Bad idea.

I guess one was bad and the box would POST without. Not even the display! C'est la vie. New gg here I come.

I suspect I know the answer but is it worth picking up a new LCD monitor as well? I have 19" NEC AccuSync 95F ( a CRT model but does good by me ) that I picked up two years ago when the old monitor died (also unceremoniously).

I'm wondering if I should go with Vista 64bit, Windows XP, Windows 2003 Server or some multi-boot combination thereof?

If you have Server 2003 available I see no reason to get XP, since 2003 is faster on a fresh install and Windows XP x64 is built off the 2003 kernel anyway.
I'm running 2003 x64 atm, but I'm in the process of downloading Vista x64 and will probably move to Vista again once that's downloaded (don't worry, I have a legit key, just too lazy to wait for official SP1 release).
I've never had a problem running Vista - in my experience it was far more stable than XP was, even on the old Shuttle I'd been running it on before.
A new monitor is always good. 1650x1050 or 1920x1200 is nice - weird thing is you get used to it after about a day and then when you go to anything smaller you wonder how you coped...

Yay! Everything has arrived safely! Tonight I'll be doing the hardware and let it "burn in" overnight. Tomorrow I'll tackle the software (which I expect to be the hard part).

I don't have any direct experience with this, but I'd recommend against Vista 64-bit unless you are building a high-end server. In my various Vista googling, I've run into many posts describing more compatibility problems with Vista-64 than the regular 32-bit version. Not sure what causes the problems or if it's just a rumor or not.

Guinn is exactly right about the monitor. I'd never be able to go back to a CRT model, but like I've said before, I can really see the difference between analog and digital connections. Just be sure to run your Windows desktop at the native resolution of the LCD. Unlike CRT's where you could really run any resolution that monitor supported. On a digital monitor, if you don't run at the native pixel resolution, then it's doing scaling which can really wash out the image and make it look soft and blurry. So get the highest native resolution that you can afford. The only problem with high resolutions is that the normal icon and text size in Windows might be too small and you'll have to play with the font DPI scaling. And, of course, that can cause some problems with some software (like zMUD and CMUD, although I plan to improve that aspect of CMUD soon).

Anyway, this is hopefully the last post of the day. The rest of the night I'll be downstairs at my workbench doing all of the hardware assembly.

There's always heaps of issues with 64 bit OS's, but my friend runs Vista 64 and it works for the things he cares about (eq2, development tools, etc). I haven't gotten brave enough to try a 64 bit OS yet.

As for moving to new hardware, usually if you change motherboard windows can get pretty upset, going into safe-mode and removing all the old drivers can help, but if it was me I'd go with a fresh format and install. Yes, it means re-doing delphi and all your tools again, but IMO if you have a brand new machine which you are going to be using daily for the next 3 years, you should get it off to a clean start rather than risk some niggly os/driver/registry conflicts between the old and new hardware.

No, you don't need to do a "full" install. Doing a "repair" install will completely reinstall Windows *without* needing to install applications. There is no way I want to reinstall all of my apps (again). I just spent the last several months doing that with Vista, and if I have to do that again, then you won't see CMUD for another month.

Anyway, my main reason for posting is that this story is just so funny that I had to share it with you:

I got all of the hardware installed (except the disks), so it was the moment of truth for the first POST test. Motherboard installed, memory installed, Video card installed...everything that I needed to get into the initial BIOS screen.

So I plug in the power cord, then flip the power rocker switch on the back. Nothing happened! A moment of panic...what could be wrong? Maybe I'll test it with just the fans plugged in. So I unplug the motherboard and then flip the rocker switch with just the fans. Still nothing! The red LED next to the power cord on the power supply wasn't even lit. Maybe it's the cord? So I try another power cord. Still nothing...

OMG, did I actually get a bad power supply from the CompUSA out-of-business sale that I can't return??

Then I remember something in my hardware install book about some power supplies not turning on unless there is sufficient load on them. So I open this book to try and find that section. I get to the section on doing the initial POST of a new computer. Here are the instructions:

1) Plug in the power cord ... check!
2) Flip the rocker switch on the back from 0 to 1 ... check
3) Press the power button on the front panel ...

Power button? Oh, right, there's a power button. Push the power button and then everything turns on and works perfectly. DOH! My old machine is normally set to power on immediately after a power outage, so I haven't used the power button on the front in a long time and had completely forgotten about it.

So yeah, after you check to see if something is plugged in, be sure you also check that you have pushed the power button. I feel so silly

Anyway, BIOS looks good. It's the Award BIOS which I like a *lot* better than the American Megatrends that I had before. And gee, there is the "USB Keyboard support" option that I wanted! Yippee. Anyway, now it's time to try and get Windows XP to boot.

Sigh. As expected, the hardware was a breeze, and the software is a complete nightmare.

First, the Windows XP CD couldn't do a "repair" install, because it couldn't see the XP partition (even though I could get to it fine from the Recovery Console). This is apparently because when Vista creates a dual-boot system and installs the Vista bootloader, XP will no longer recognize the disk as an XP disk.

Using the XP Recovery Console, I was able to type "FIXMBR" and "FIXBOOT" to restore the XP bootloader. Then when I restarted the XP disk again, it properly found the XP installation.

The problem is going to be drive letters. On the previous computer, I had this configuration:

Well, now on the new computer, the drive assignments have all been reset. When XP does a "repair install" it it repairing C:/WINDOWS instead of F:/WINDOWS. This is going to cause all sorts of problems to fix. I need to go Google this to find out how to fix it. Hopefully it doesn't involve changing a bunch of registry entries.

I thought about trying to add a bunch of extra disks to the system to push the system disk up to a higher letter, but the new computer always seems to put the SATA drives *before* the IDE drives, and I don't have enough SATA drives to get the XP disk to be F:

And I can't imagine what sort of nightmare I will have getting Vista back to V:

This is just stupid because it was trivial to set up these drive letters when I first installed both XP and Vista. So I don't know why Microsoft has to force C: when doing a "repair" install. I just wish they would fix this drive letter mess once and for all. Just let me assign whatever drive letter I want to each disk *before* doing the repair/install!!

Hmm, I went into Safe mode to attempt to change the drive letters, and they were already magically set correctly (with F:/Windows and C:/Apps). So, even though the Repair Install said C:, it looks like it eventually figured out that it was really F: after a couple of reboots.

So, now I'm into Windows XP with the new hardware. Just got the new network drivers installed and I can access the network now, so now it's time to run Windows Update to get this system back to it's latest SP2 state. Then I'll be able to format the new disk that I bought on Monday and hopefully start transferring the Vista files overnight. Then tomorrow I can figure out how to do a Vista "repair" install.

Sigh (again). I can't even seem to run Windows Update now. The Windows event log is filling up with error messages related to some Microsoft Office component that can't be loaded. But when Internet Explorer tries to download the latest version of it's software, it just displays an error message.

I'm going to try a Repair install one more time and see if that helps. If that doesn't work, then I'm going to bed and will think about it more in the morning.

WHY OH WHY can't Microsoft just make it easier to split the "system" from the "user data". If it wasn't for the damn registry, then maybe we could put our applications on a separate data disk and not have these problems. I really do *not* want to have to reinstall all of my applications again!!@!

Oh yeah...and I just found out that Vista no longer has the "repair install" option anymore. The Repair option on the DVD just gives access to various tools for fixing boot problems and getting a command prompt. There doesn't seem to be any way to run Vista in "repair" mode like XP where it reloads all of the drivers. So I'm not sure what I'm going to do with Vista right now. This is getting really depressing.

Can't sleep. Just can't get my mind off of this stuff, so I guess I'll post some more. Maybe that will help.

I think you guys might be right about doing a clean Vista install. I could spend days on this trying to get it to upgrade properly, and then always wonder exactly what stuff won't be working right that will cause me more grief down the road.

If I do a clean install, then I need to reinstall all of my development tools again. That will take several days. But at least then I'll know that I have a clean and working system.

I keep all of my data files in the C:/Apps disk. So all I am losing is the "Program Files" area on the system disk and all of the registry entries for the installed apps. But I should be able to look at my old Vista disk to remind myself exactly what I have installed over the past couple of months. The really painful install will be the Delphi Update in December that took such a ridiculous amount of time.

Also, a clean install will at least let me test this new hardware to make sure Vista is actually stable on it (although that is looking pretty good at this point...I really love the new hardware)

The bad news is that I have hosed my working Windows XP installation. When I was trying to go to sleep, I thought of an idea where I would restore the previous XP disk and put it back into the old hardware box, just so that I could still have access to that working XP installation. Unfortunately, I discovered that my image backup of the XP disk was only actually making an image of the C:/Apps disk and *not* the F:/Windows XP disk. I really should have double-checked this before I took apart the old system and did the XP Repair install, but I didn't.

I don't know why I never made an image backup of the Windows disk. That's just stupid. Sure, it's not important as the user data on C:\Apps, but it still has the registry with all of the application-specific settings in it. Dumb Dumb Dumb.

So, the old hardware is out...there is no way to get back to where I was on Monday. I've got this half-working XP installation from the "Repair" install, and if I can get Windows Update to work, then it might be a lot better. Most of the current problems are because of the lack of the SP2 files and lack of .NET files. That causes a lot of odd problems and slowdowns. But I feel like it will be a lot better if I can just get Windows Update to work.

I guess the worst that can happen is that I have to do my WinXP development on my laptop. I *do* have a working copy of Delphi 7 with CMUD 2.18 on this laptop (well, it might be 2.16, but I just need to get the latest files from my SVN repository). So, maybe I don't really need the dual-boot system or the old XP system, as long as I have access to all of the data files.

Anyway, I think that's the direction I'm leaning right now. I'm doing a clean Vista install on that new SATA disk that I bought on Monday just to test the new hardware and see how it works. So far it's working much better than it did on Monday, so there was definitely some sort of compatibility problem between Vista and the old hardware and new disk.

Damn, I am REALLY getting pissed now! During the Vista install where it says "please wait while Windows checks your computer's performance" it waited about 10 minutes and then gave me a Blue-Screen crash in VOLSNAP.SYS. Great...I can't even install Vista. Now what?

Edited: In reading about VOLSNAP.SYS it seems to be related to the fact that XP System Restore points are not compatible with Vista. Is it possible that during this "performance check" that Vista is somehow looking at my XP installation drive and trying to do something to it?

Of course, since the Vista installer runs from within an existing XP system, there is always going to be an XP disk on the system, so you'd think Vista would know to ignore it. So maybe that isn't the problem?

Maybe it's still bad low-level disk formatting. The Vista install didn't do a proper Format job...it just did a quick format (and didn't give any other options). So I think I really need to reformat this partition cleanly using the new SATA controller. But I don't trust the old WinXP installation to properly format for Vista (since there is a known difference between NTFS on XP and Vista). I think only a later update to XP added the fix to the NTFS formatting for Vista. But of course I can't run Windows Update to get that patch!

So now I am creating a *fresh* XP installation on yet another partition. Then I'll see if I can get Windows Update to run in this fresh XP install so that I can get a clean XP SP2 install. Then I can try reformatting the disk for Vista.

But I feel like I'm grasping at straws now. I have never heard of anyone having this much trouble with Vista on brand new hardware!!!!!!!!!!

Edited again again: The error shown above is apparently a network timeout error. I decided to just try it again, and now it works. Apparently Windows Update was just down at the exact moment I tried to access it. Now I'm starting to get the updates installed, so there is still hope.

Edit: Another trick that might help the Vista installation is to delete the partition from the new drive. Vista's install program should be able to create the partition and format the drive. This is the method I always used for a clean install in XP.

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Last edited by Vijilante on Sat Feb 23, 2008 12:21 pm; edited 1 time in total

Back to the Vista questions and the VOLSNAP.SYS crash...I wonder if I should go ahead and give Vista the actual SATA drivers from the Gigabyte site? So far, Vista hasn't needed any special SATA driver to see the disks. But maybe the driver that Vista is using by default has some problems.

The computer is still in the middle of the XP SP2 patch, but when that is done, I think I'll give Vista another try since I already have the SATA drivers sitting on a floppy.

Thanks for the link Vijilante! I'll give that a try a bit later to see if I can recover my previous XP partition and get it updated. I never even thought to look for the service packs in downloadable format like that.

Edited: I now have a clean XP partition. All service packs and patches installed. Acronis True Image and Disk Director installed, along with Firefox and AVG. This gives me a nice stable base to format the Vista drive and try installing it again. And it's a lot faster to use this clean partition than my old XP partition with all of the crap installed. So I might keep this CleanXP partition around in case of any future problems.

Like Vijilante, I only ever install service packs from the full downloadable. I've got my Vista x64 with SP1 downloaded now. Tempted to wait for Firefox 3 (since I've got project work to do anyway, so last thing I need to do is waste an afternoon reinstalling an OS).
I do think you seem to have terrible luck with things though. My setup tends to be Windows on C, Docs and Programs on D, Games on E, Music on F and misc stuff on G. Then if I need to reinstall I just rename 'Program Files' to 'Old Program Files', delete and recreate the C partition and do a fresh install, knowing that on the off chance there are a few files needed from the old program files directory then it's sitting there safe and sound. I can put the apps back within a few hours and I know I've got a completely clean build every time - I just don't even bother with repairs since they never come out as nice as a fresh install.
I dual boot Ubuntu and Vista, if I needed XP then I'd use Parallels or VMWare and run it inside a window.

Might be worth having a look at Windows Vista Automated Installation Kit [WAIK] - made for capturing a working Vista image for deployment across a number of machines. Or in your case you could get your working install once it's all patched and ready to go, then in the case of needing to reinstall you have a good version with apps already done. It's not just the same as doing a disk image, it's a proper capture of the OS rather than the disk.

Thanks for the ideas Guinn. But how do you get all of your apps back in just a few hours? It's not the "Program Files" that is the problem (I already move that to the C:/Apps drive), but it's the Registry settings. For example, Delphi doesn't run at all without all of it's Registry settings. Neither does Office. That's the stuff that needs to be taken off the system disk somehow.

I'll definitely be making some images of these "clean" partitions once I get them. That will make it a lot easier in the future if I need a quick XP or Vista partition. I might look at the WAIK, but if it's another Microsoft tool, then I might pass on it.

I'm just about ready to try a Vista install again. I've got the new disk with the 20GB CleanXP partition, a 100GB empty partition for Vista, and a restored 100GB image of the Apps drive from Monday morning. This gives me everything I need for the system on one disk, so I'm going to disconnect the other disks and reboot so that Vista doesn't try to mess with any of the other drives during it's "performance checking". And I'll also use the proper SATA drivers to see if that helps too. I should know more in another hour.

Gee, I haven't done an "all-nighter" in a long time. Not really my idea of fun.